INSTITUTO POLITECNICO NACIONAL INGLÉS PARA ECONOMISTAS II

ESCUELA SUPERIOR DE ECONOMÍA Teacher: MARISELA CRUZ MEZA

MANIFESTO OF THE COMMUNIST PARTY

SECTION I. VOCABULARY
En la primera columna escribe dentro del paréntesis el significado al español de las siguientes
palabras o frases y en la siguiente escribe en español brevemente, con tus propias palabras, la
definción que de acuerdo al Manifiesto del partido Comunista de Marx corresponde.

ENGLISH/SPANISH DEFINITION
1. Communism
( )

2. Communist party
( )

3. Class struggles
( )

4. Bourgeois / Proletariat
( )

5. Freeman / slave
( )

6. Patrician / plebeian
( )

7. Lord / serf
( )

8. Guild master / journeyman

( )
9. Sway of the feudal nobility
( )

10. Oppressor / oppressed

( )

11. Feudal society / middle ages

( )

12. Wage labour

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INSTITUTO POLITECNICO NACIONAL INGLÉS PARA ECONOMISTAS II
ESCUELA SUPERIOR DE ECONOMÍA Teacher: MARISELA CRUZ MEZA

( )

13. Means of social production

( )

14. Means of exchange

( )

15. Commodities
( )

16. Closed guilds

( )

17. Single workshop

( )

18. Manufacturing system

( )

19. Modern industry

( )

20. Over-production
( )

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 INSTITUTO POLITECNICO NACIONAL INGLÉS PARA ECONOMISTAS II
ESCUELA SUPERIOR DE ECONOMÍA Teacher: MARISELA CRUZ MEZA

SECTION II. VOCABULARY IN CONTEXT

El siguiente texto es un extracto del Manifesto of the Communist Party, elige una opción de las
tres que se presentan a continuación para cada reactivo y coloca en el espacio en blanco la letra que
mejor complete cada una de las siguientes oraciones.

1 a) Hidden 4 a) Wants 7 a) Air 10 a) Subsistence 13 a) Revenue

b) Struggles b) Middle class b) Fetters b) Raw material b) Class domination
c) Freemam c) Industrial army c) Swamped c) Production c) Political Party

2 a) People 5 a) Agriculture 8 a) Landowner 11 a) Production 14 a) Poverty

b) Serf b) Peasantry b) Dislodged b) Income b) Sway
c) Society c) Workshop c) Workers c) Development c) Household

3 a) Bourgeois 6 a) Production 9 a) Poor 12 a) Taxation 15 a) Modern Industry

b) Exchange b) Commodity b) Private b) Wages b) Freedom
c) Proletariat c) Monarchies c) Property c) Burden c) Communism society

MANIFESTO OF THE COMMUNIST PARTY by Marx & Engels

I. BOURGEOIS AND PROLETARIANS

The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class (1) ______.
Freeman and slave, patrician and plebeian, feudal lord and (2) ______, in a word, oppressor and oppressed.
Our epoch, the epoch of the bourgeoisie, possesses however, this distinctive feature; it has simplified the class
antagonism. Society as a whole is more and more splitting up into two great hostile camps: bourgeoisie and (3) ______.
The feudal system of industry, under which industrial production was monopolized by closed guilds, now longer sufficed
for the growing (4) ________of the new markets. The manufacturing system took its place; division of labour between the
different corporate guilds vanished in the face of the division of labour in each single (5) _____.
We see, therefore, how the modern bourgeoisie is itself the product of a long course of development, of a series of
revolutions in the modes of (6) _________ and of exchange.
Constant revolutionizing of production, everlasting uncertainty and agitation distinguish the bourgeois epoch from all
earlier ones. All fixed, fast frozen relations, with their train of ancient and venerable prejudices and opinions are swept away.
All that is solid melts into (7) __________.
Because all old established national industries have been destroyed, they are (8) ________ by new industries.
The bourgeoisie by the rapid improvement of all instruments of production, by the immensely facilitated means of
communication, draws all, nations into civilization. The bourgeoisie has agglomerated population, centralized means of
production, and has concentrated (9) _______ in a few hands. The necessary consequence of this was a political
centralization.
Owing to the extensive use of machinery and to division of labour, the work of the proletarians has lost all individual
character, and consequently, all charm for the workman, the cost of production of a workman is restricted, almost entirely, to
the means of (10) _______ that he requires for his maintenance, and for the propagation of his race.

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INSTITUTO POLITECNICO NACIONAL INGLÉS PARA ECONOMISTAS II
ESCUELA SUPERIOR DE ECONOMÍA Teacher: MARISELA CRUZ MEZA

The proletariat goes through various stages of (11) ________. With its birth begins its struggle with the bourgeoisie. At
first the contest is carried on by individual laborers, then by the workpeople of a factory, then by the operatives of one trade,
in one locality, against the individual bourgeoisie who directly exploits them. The growing competition among the bourgeois
make the (12) ______ of the workers ever more fluctuating and precarious.
Thereupon the workers begin club together in order to keep up the rate of wages, the result was the ever-expanding
union of the workers. This organization of the proletarians into a class, and consequently into a (13) ___________. It
compels legislative recognition of particular interest of the workers.
The essential condition for the existence, and for the (14) __________ of the bourgeois class, is the formation of capital,
the condition of capital is wage labour. The development of (15) ________, therefore, cuts from under its feet the very
foundation on which he bourgeoisies produces and appropriates products.

SECTION III. READING COMPREHENSION

Lee el texto y responde en español las siguientes preguntas.
APARTADO I: BOURGEOIS AND PROLETARIANS

1. Explica en qué sentido entiendes las siguientes frases:

“The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles”

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“Our epoch, the epoch of the bourgeoisie, possesses, however, this distinct feature: it has simplified class
antagonisms. Society as a whole is more and more splitting up into two great hostile camps, into two great classes
directly facing each other - bourgeoisie and proletariat.”

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2. Explica qué relación existe entre el descubrimiento de América y el desarrollo de la Gran Industria
moderna. Señala las etapas del proceso que van de uno al otro.

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3. Explica cómo el desarrollo de la burguesía ha ido acompañado de un progreso político en cada una
de sus etapas.

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INSTITUTO POLITECNICO NACIONAL INGLÉS PARA ECONOMISTAS II
ESCUELA SUPERIOR DE ECONOMÍA Teacher: MARISELA CRUZ MEZA

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4. Explica en qué sentido Marx afirma que la burguesía ha desempeñado en la historia un papel
altamente revolucionario.

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5. Explica en qué sentido puede enterderse la siguiente frase:

“All that is solid melts into the air”

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6. ¿Cuál es la idea central del siguiente párrafo?

The bourgeoisie, during its rule of scarce one hundred years, has created more massive and more colossal
productive forces than have all preceding generations together. Subjection of nature's forces to man,
machinery, application of chemistry to industry and agriculture, steam navigation, railways, electric telegraphs,
clearing of whole continents for cultivation, canalization or rivers, whole populations conjured out of the
ground -- what earlier century had even a presentiment that such productive forces slumbered in the lap of
social labor?

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7. Explica cómo concibe Marx la tension entre desarrollo de las fuerzas productivas y desarrollo de las
relaciones sociales de producción al contrastar la situación del feudalismo frente la capitalismo y del
capitalismo frente a las potencialidades que este en el presente abre y cierra paradójicamente.
Revisa los siguientes párrafos:

We see then: the means of production and of exchange, on whose foundation the bourgeoisie built itself up,
were generated in feudal society… the feudal relations of property became no longer compatible with the
already developed productive forces; they became so many fetters. They had to be burst asunder; they were
burst asunder.

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INSTITUTO POLITECNICO NACIONAL INGLÉS PARA ECONOMISTAS II
ESCUELA SUPERIOR DE ECONOMÍA Teacher: MARISELA CRUZ MEZA

Into their place stepped free competition, accompanied by a social and political constitution adapted in it, and
the economic and political sway of the bourgeois class.

A similar movement is going on before our own eyes. Modern bourgeois society, with its relations of
production, of exchange and of property, a society that has conjured up such gigantic means of production and
of exchange, is like the sorcerer who is no longer able to control the powers of the nether world whom he
has called up by his spells. For many a decade past, the history of industry and commerce is but the history of
the revolt of modern productive forces against modern conditions of production, against the property relations
that are the conditions for the existence of the bourgeois and of its rule. It is enough to mention the commercial
crises that, by their periodical return, put the existence of the entire bourgeois society on its trial, each time
more threateningly. In these crises, a great part not only of the existing products, but also of the previously
created productive forces, are periodically destroyed. In these crises, there breaks out an epidemic that, in all
earlier epochs, would have seemed an absurdity -- the epidemic of over-production. Society suddenly finds
itself put back into a state of momentary barbarism; it appears as if a famine, a universal war of devastation,
had cut off the supply of every means of subsistence; industry and commerce seem to be destroyed. And why?
Because there is too much civilization, too much means of subsistence, too much industry, too much
commerce… The conditions of bourgeois society are too narrow to comprise the wealth created by them. And
how does the bourgeoisie get over these crises? On the one hand, by enforced destruction of a mass of
productive forces; on the other, by the conquest of new markets, and by the more thorough exploitation of the
old ones. That is to say, by paving the way for more extensive and more destructive crises, and by diminishing
the means whereby crises are prevented.

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8. Explica por qué para Marx el único sujeto capaz de impulsar una transformación de sentido anti y
transcapitalista es el proletariado y no la burguesía o las clases medias.

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9. Explica cómo define Marx al proletariado y por qué este concepto sigue siendo vigente para explicar
la complejidad de la lucha de clases en el siglo XXI.

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